Added: Jan 30, 2012

From: IrishChessUnion

Duration: 1:16

Footage from the 2012 Chess Classic. The annual Gonzaga weekender was held over the last weekend of January with the Masters section being won by Irish Olympiad player and one of the rising stars of Irish chess, David Fitzsimons, who conceded just one draw to runner up Bartlomiej Cichonski. Their critical game being a hard fought and interesting affair. Amazingly David has now won the event for the third year in a row. Very well deserved indeed considering the gamble of exposing his Fide rating by being the number one seed. Despite scoring 4.5 from 5 in some tough and well played games, David actually lost some Fide rating points. But at least the first prize of a few hundred Euros will be of some compensation! David will be playing in this years Bunratty weekender in a few weeks so perhaps we will be treated to a re-match with Nigel Short whom he drew with last year and should have beaten at the end. A nice feature of this years event was live games on the internet. Also there was the discovery of a star woman player for Irish chess in the person of Monika Gedvilaite who had some fine results finished joint third and actually outplayed David in the opening only to get ground down by David in a tough technical ending featuring two bishops against two knights which was drawn with best play but hard to defend in practise. It was her only loss. The Irish Chess Union would be delighted if Monika was willing to make herself available for the Irish women's team at the 2012 Olympiad which is being held in Istanbul,Turkey as surely she would raise the bar for others and offer much encouragement for other emerging female talent too. Monika has been resident here for some years and is entitled to play for Ireland now. After speaking with Monika it seems that perhaps the only stumbling block will be to persuade Monika that bringing her husband and child to the Olympiad as part of a family holiday just might be possible and well worth considering. It has been done before and will be done again no doubt. In any event, it was very good to see such a strong and talented female player active in Irish chess. Other notable performers were Tony Bermingham and Bartlomiej Cichonski who both seem to play far above their actual ratings.

Channel: Sports

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